By Mark Landler
With a staccato burst, a horn sounded in the control room of the HMS Vanguard, sending the crew of the nuclear-armed Royal Navy submarine to battle stations. The voice of the commanding officer crackled over the intercom. “Set condition 1SQ,” he said, ordering its battery of ballistic missiles to be readied for launch.
It was just a drill, conducted last Monday for a visiting VIP, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. But Starmer had reason to pay close attention when he was shown where the submarine’s launch key is stored: The prime minister is the only person in the United Kingdom authorized to order a nuclear strike.
“You’re looking for the ideal conditions?” Starmer asked softly, as the captain explained how the Vanguard must be maneuvered to the right depth to launch its Trident missiles. Starmer leaned forward in the captain’s chair, the blue glow from a bank of screens reflected in his eyeglasses.
Later, after he had climbed a 32-foot ladder to the submarine’s deck, Starmer reflected on its nearly seven-month-long mission. Prowling silently in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, it is designed to deter a nuclear conflict with Russia (at least one of the four Vanguard-class submarines is always on patrol). At a time when Europe’s capacity to defend itself has come under criticism, not least from President Donald Trump, Starmer said these mighty boats were an ironclad symbol of Britain’s commitment to NATO.
“Twenty-four hours, 365 days, year after year after year, for 55 years,” Starmer told me after we had cast off and the Vanguard steamed toward its home port in Scotland. “It has kept the peace for a very long time.”
Back on a tugboat, taking us to shore in the Firth of Clyde, Starmer sat alone, staring out a window at the gathering clouds. It has been a defining, if sobering, few weeks for the 62-year-old leader: Swept into power eight months ago on a tide of discontent about the cost of living, he now finds himself fighting to avert a rupture of the post-World War II alliance between Europe and the United States.
“In our heart of hearts, we’ve known this moment was coming from just over three years ago, when Russian tanks rolled across the border” of Ukraine, Starmer said of Europe’s heightened vulnerability and the strains in the NATO alliance. “We have to treat this as a galvanizing moment and seize the initiative.”
The crisis has transformed Starmer, turning a methodical, unflashy human rights lawyer and Labour Party politician into something akin to a wartime leader. With debates over welfare reform and the economy largely eclipsed for now by fears about Britain’s national security, Starmer invoked Winston Churchill and, in a nod to his party, Clement Attlee, the first postwar Labour prime minister, as he described Britain’s singular role in a more fractured West.
“Many people are urging us to choose between the U.S. and Europe,” he said in one of three conversations last week. “Churchill didn’t do it. Attlee didn’t do it. It’d be a big mistake, in my view, to choose now.”
Pausing for a moment, Starmer added, “I do think that President Trump has a point when he says there needs to be a greater burden borne by European countries for the collective self-defense of Europe.”
The immediate question is whether Britain and Europe will play a meaningful role in Trump’s negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. To ensure that they do, Starmer is trying to assemble a multinational military force that he calls a coalition of the willing. The goal, he says, is to keep Ukraine’s skies, ports and borders secure after any peace settlement.
“I don’t trust Putin,” Starmer said. “I’m sure Putin would try to insist that Ukraine should be defenseless after a deal because that gives him what he wants, which is the opportunity to go in again.”
Britain faces hurdles on every front: Russia has rejected the idea of a NATO peacekeeping force. Trump has yet to offer security guarantees, which Starmer says are crucial before countries will commit troops. Aside from Britain and France, no other European country has done so, even as Starmer led the first military planning meeting for the coalition Thursday.
Senior British military and defense officials said they expected that ultimately, multiple countries would contribute planes, ships or troops to the effort. But regardless of the political and diplomatic uncertainties, Starmer said he felt he had little choice but to get ahead of the pack.
“If we only move at the pace of the most cautious,” he said, “then we’re going to move very slowly and we’re not going to be in the position we need to be in.”
Three days after the submarine visit, Starmer took part in a keel-laying ceremony for a new fleet of ballistic missile submarines, being built at a shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness, in northwest England. Four Dreadnought-class vessels, each almost the length of St. Paul’s Cathedral, are scheduled to go into service in the early 2030s, at an estimated cost of 41 billion pounds ($53 billion).
Standing in the cavernous factory, with the aft section of a submarine towering above him, Starmer expressed pride in this statement of British might. But it was also a reminder of the stretched state of its military.
The Vanguard-class submarines being replaced by the Dreadnoughts are nearly 30 years old — “pretty old kit,” in Starmer’s words — which necessitates prolonged maintenance periods. That has extended the patrols for the other vessels in the fleet and put acute pressure on their roughly 130-person crews.
The strain was on display during Starmer’s visit to the Vanguard, which set a Royal Navy record for longest patrol. Sailors said the food, excellent at first, deteriorated as the submarine’s provisions dwindled. Four were returning to spouses who had had babies while they were away. Others lost family members, only learning the news from the captain on the eve of their return.
“It is with huge respect to the team” that they survived seven months at sea, Starmer said after stepping gingerly off the submarine’s weathered deck. “But we shouldn’t be celebrating it.”
“This has doubled my resolve to ensure we go further and faster in our capabilities,” he said, “to make sure they are not put in that position again.”
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